ORDERS OF ARCHITECTURE.
An order is a decorated imitation of those primitive huts, which consisted of rows of posts, made of the trunks of trees, disposed in the ground around a quadran gular plat ; and supporting a covering, which consisted of four lintelling beams, placed on the top of the posts, with other transverse beams, supported ag-ain by two of the opposite lintels: and lastly, of three mws of transverse timbers support Ing each other, and the lowermost sup ported by the ends of the transverse bearws on each side, in parallel inclined planes, rising from the ends of the trans verse 'nuns, till each plane of timbers on the one siee met its corresponding plane on the othet the lowermost timbers on each side beinr disposed in pairs, in the sarne vertical plains with the transverse beams, forming tile sides of a triangle, and projecting beyoed the lintels, and the uppermost inclined planes of timbers, serving to fix the cm ering of tyle or stone. From this simple construction arose the first order of architecture called Doric Order. The columns were imi tated from the wooden posts tapering up wards, as trees do by nature, and placed upon a stone base, to prevent them from sinking : vertical channels, or flutes, were cut in the shafts, to hold the spears, or staves, which the early Greeks carried along with them. The capital was form ed by circular stones, laid on the tops of the columns, and square ones again upon these, to protect the shafts from rain, and to receive the lintelling beam, which be came the architrave : the ends of the joists over the architrave were not in vet. tical channels, forming the triglyphs, for preventing the rain from adhering to them, The cornice IVES formed by the projecting timbers of the roof; the ends of the bottom tier of these timbers form ing the mutules the lower sides of which, as well as the under side of the band of the triglyphs, were cut into thin cylinders, or conic frustrums, representing the drops of rain falling from the edges. These parts, which at first resulted from the primitive habitation, were afterwards con verted into more elegant decorations of simple and natural forms. The general figure of the Attic Doric consists of but few parts, even as practised in the most refined ages of Greece : the fluted shaft, terminating with one, two, or three annu lar channels ; the capital, consisting of the fillets, and a bold echinus, having the same common axis with the shaft ; and the crowning abacus form the entire column, which therefore consists of a base and shaft. The spacious architrave, resting
on the columns, consisting of a crowning band, with the guttere and tenia pending therefrom, under the the frize, consisting of a capital, or cymatium, and equidistant triglyph, leaving square re cesses between them, called metopes ; and the cornice, consisting of mantes over the triglyphs and over the metopes; the corona formed of a band and cyma tium above; and the sima, or crowning moulding, formed of a large ovolo and fillet, compose the whole entablature ; which therefore consists of a cornice, frize, and architrave. This is the general character of the Grecian Doric. It is al most constantly placed upon three steps, proportioned to the height of the order, and not to the human step ; the shafts of the columns diminish, with a beautiful curve line from the bottom to the cincture below the annulets ; the flutes are with out fillets, of a circular or elliptic section, and terminate immediately below the an milets: the annulets of the capital most commonly follow the contour of the ovo lo ; above them, the band, crowning the top of the architrave, is one continued string without breaks; the guttm under the regula, and under the mutules, are generally of a cylindrical form, at least tapering upwards in a very small degree.
The triglyphs are placed upon the ex tremities of the frize, and not over the axis of the extreme columns; and consist of two whole channels, and two half ones upon the edges ; the sides of each glyph, or channel, arc two vertical planes, meet ing each other in a right angle at the back, and consequently the face of the triglyph at 135 degrees on each side of the glyph ; the tops of the channels are sometimes curved in the front, like a very eccentric semi-ellipsis, placed with its greater axis horizontal, as in the temple of Theseus ; and very frequently with a horizontal line, joined to each vertical line at the side, with a quadrant of a cir cle, and the tops of the two half channels on each edge of the triglyph are semi circular, not only in front, but in the pro files also, leaving the angle pendant at the top, as in the temples of Minerva at Athens, and at Sunium, and the temple of Jupiter Panellenius ; and sometimes the head of the glyph is horizontal, as in the Doric portico at Athens, and in the temple of Jupiter Nemzus, between Ar gos and Corinth.